Category: Hardware

The laptop and the OS

I have an old beat up but super nice back-in-the-day Sony Vaio VGN-TZ170N that has been sitting in a drawer for a few years. This thing was pretty much a flagship machine back when it was launched in 2007, it carried an MSRP of $2,399.99.

I figure that since I never get rid of anything and living in San Francisco means that space (for normal people) is a luxury that we don’t have (let’s say family pressure is the driver), it’s time to sell this (at least try to) to someone who will appreciate it more than me.

Dimensions: 10.9″ x 7.8″ x 0.8-1.17″ (this thing is SMALL – unbelievable how much is packed into it, even today never mind 2007).

Windows Vista Business COA on the underside.

Looks like you can even pick up a replacement (or additional 6 cell battery for $22 now.
While the RAM slot is accessible from the underside, it doesn’t look possible to upgrade it beyond the 2GB limit (maybe there is a 4G DDR2 SODIMM that would work? I don’t have one to try).

The revival?

First, I grabbed a copy of Vista Business and installed it via the internal optical drive (nice!). This took *forever*, and was over 4 CDs. Once I got into Windows after waiting about 2 days to install Windows updates, I then went on a quest to kill all the background processes that jam the CPU at 100%.

End result? Machine back in the drawer for another 2 years.

Lightweight Linux

I knew that there were various distributions of Linux that are aimed at low spec, or low performance systems. Since I’ve always been an Ubuntu guy, I decided to start there. The aim of this post isn’t to review the top options of lightweight Linux – I simply don’t have enough time. I can say that at some point I must have installed Kubuntu 14.04, I powered it up, there it was – works great. Uses a bit too much RAM for my liking (about half gone at boot), I started looking into other options to prep this for eBay.

The machine’s hard drive is pretty slow, and I’m also burning these to CD, so I can’t really be assed spending a long time trying them all out. Here’s a non-scientific conclusion of what I considered over the course of an hour or two:

Lubuntu

I did look at Lubuntu as a more lightweight replacement for Kubuntu, and that’s what started this whole thing..

Super lightweight and looks ideal for purpose. However, the choice of applications preinstalled are typically considered lighter versions. For example, no LibreOffice.

Generally, the consensus seems to be that it feels a bit too lightweight or barebones. This doesn’t freak me out, as I’d install what I want to, but for eBay purposes, I moved on.

Ubuntu MATE

Installation

Download & Preparation

First, I had to figure out a way to burn the ISO to disc. Let’s use the Sony and the Kubuntu installation.

Since I pre-downloaded it on my Macbook Air, I uploaded it to the NAS and grabbed it from there. I have to say it was much slower downloading it from the NAS than it was uploading it (and my Air doesn’t have ac wireless).

Approximately a third of the way done, the system looks OK. Interestingly, CPU software interrupts seems pretty high.

Looking further into this, it looks like it’s the timer (IRQ 0), there’s not much I can do about that. I guess this is just related to using an old machine, and not really worth tuning.

I do note that the system fan has kicked in, Firefox is taxing the machine. No real slowdowns noticed, though.

Eventually, a cup of tea later, it’s time to write the ISO to disc. I’ve not really had much of a requirement for optical discs or drives for quite a few years now, so I’ve still had the same pack of DVD-Rs for easily over 5 years. Interestingly, they all seem to have some weirdness to them now. I’m not sure if you can see this, but here’s a photo:

Over 5 years old, still on the original spindle. They all look like this.

I’m not holding out much hope for a 9 year old machine being able to burn a 5+ year old disc, but it’s worth a shot.

Kubuntu: Burning LXLE on 9 year old laptop with 5+ year old media

Looks like it worked fine. Verified OK, and disc verification in LXLE menu was OK too. Man, I don’t even want to sell this. 🙂

Installation

Took about 5 minutes to load past the loading screen. Be free, Be open! .. Wifi connected fine.

20 minutes to get to “Installation is complete” message.

We’re in business!

Usability

Overall it’s pretty snappy. LibreOffice worked ok, I was able to do some basic things in terminal and used Seamonkey to perform a speedtest.net run (so Flash works OK too).

Hardware (out of the box)

Audio: OK

Wifi: OK

Bluetooth: Looks OK in dmesg, didn’t test further

Optical drive: OK

GSM modem: Looks OK in dmesg, didn’t test further

LAN: looks OK in dmesg, didn’t test further

iee1394/firewire: Looks OK in lspci, didn’t test further.

Fingerprint reader: Looks OK in lsusb, didn’t test further

Camera: Looks OK in lsusb, no driver installed.

Blue FN key presses; some work OK

Volume up/down OK

Mute OK, doesn’t un-mute

Brightness does nothing

Page Up/Page down OK

Home/End OK

Didn’t test the others.

Right hand side of touchpad for scrolling works well.

Software

CPU gets high, pretty much any time you do anything with the browser. It doesn’t seem to slow down the OS really from a user experience perspective, though. Right now, I guess anti-virus updates happened, and it’s using 100% of a single core doing regular updates. Overall, a nice little compact Linux laptop.

speedtest.net over wireless.

Battery life test will be difficult, it’s going to take a while to finish charging. I’m not really sure if it even still holds a charge.

Browsing generally feels OK, and modern. Youtube plays a music video smooth with no skips, although CPU is high. Works full screen too.

Now I didn’t expect Netflix to work, and I wasn’t disappointed. Before I started streaming, just after I logged in, RAM usage spiked enough to start swapping ~100MB. Once I tried to start streaming, it threw an error saying HTML5 support was needed. I guess Seamonkey doesn’t have support / correct support. Quick Google seems to show this as a known problem. I launched the Lubuntu Software Center, and grabbed Firefox from there. No dice, same issue.

Battery Test

Charging the battery took a long time; It’s 88% now and wants 27 minutes to fill. It was 0% (and off for years) when I started this. I switched out for a 16V 4a adapter I have from the 16V 2.2a and it only dropped to 25 minute charge time from 27 – I guess it just takes a while to charge. From 89% to empty, it’s giving an estimate of 3h 51m remaining. It looks like this thing still holds a charge!

Usage Log

Started on battery at 17:54

Had a game of DreamChess .. still 89%

Game of CriticalMass still 89%

I am now editing the remainder of this blog post from the laptop itself via Seamonkey. Works well, the screen is really nice.

Down to 87% remaining and an estimate of 3 hours.

Still only using 20% cpu and 450MB RAM.

Have 4 desktop spaces open, with just the Seamonkey browser on one half of the screen. The keyboard is still pretty nice to type on, except for me having a missing tab key cap.

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After managing to ignore the fad for a while now, I’ve decided I’m going to buy a netbook. Surprising, really. Especially when you consider my past fetish for palmtop and tiny portable computers.

I’m currently torn between the Samsung NC10 and the Asus Eee PC 1000HE.
I’m not sure which is best yet, both seem to run World of Warcraft about the same. 😛
The Samsung looks like it has a better keyboard and aesthetically doesn’t look like ass, where as the Asus has 10hrs battery! The Samsung has a decent battery too, but…. argh…!

Asus Eee 1000HESamsung NC10

The jury is still out on this one….

Update! I’ve bought one.. a white Asus Eee PC 1000HE! Will see how she performs when I get her…